you--and look at
your coat!"

"It will dry," laughed the girl from the Red Mill. "Let's hurry after
them, Tom. You're wet a good deal, too--and I shall miss my coat,
being so heated. Come on!"

But she could not escape the congratulations of the girls and boys when
they reached the steamboat. Even Mary Cox's closest friends gathered
around Ruth to thank her. Nobody could gainsay the fact that Ruth had
been of great help in the recovery of Mary and Bob from the lake.

But Helen! had the other girls--and Miss Reynolds--not been in the
little cabin of the boat which had been given up to the feminine
members of the party, she would have broken down and cried on Ruth's
shoulder. To think that she had been guilty of neglecting her chum!

"I believe I have been bewitched, Ruthie," she whispered. "Tom, I
know, is on the verge of scolding me. What did you say to him?"

"Nothing that need trouble you in the least, you may be sure, Helen,"
said Ruth. "But, my dear, if it has taken such a thing as
_this_--which is not a thing to go into heroics over--to remind you
that I might possibly be hurt by your treatment, I am very sorry
indeed."

"Why, Ruth!" Helen gasped. "You don't forgive me?"

"I am not at all sure, Helen, that you either need or want my
forgiveness," returned Ruth. "You have done nothing yourself for which
you need to ask it--er, at least, very little; but your friends have
insulted and been unkind to me. I do not think that I could have
called girls _my_ friends who had treated you so, Helen."

Miss Cox had retired to a small stateroom belonging to one of the
officers of the boat, while her clothing was dried by the colored
stewardess. Bob Steele, however, borrowed some old clothes of some of
the crew, and appeared when the lunch was ready in those nondescript
garments, greatly adding to the enjoyment of the occasion.

"Well, sonny, your croup _will_ bother you sure enough, after that
dip," declared his sister. "Come! let sister tuck your bib in like a
nice boy. And _don't_ gobble!"

Bob was such a big fellow--his face was so pink, and his hair so
yellow--that Madge's way of talking to him made him seem highly comic.
The fellows from Seven Oaks shouted with laughter, and the girls
giggled. Mr. Hargreaves and Miss Reynolds, both relieved beyond
expression by the happy conclusion of what might have been a very
serious accident, did not quell the fun; and fifty or sixty young
people never had